Announcement 📢 : The Basic Pays tab has been renamed to Position History (Basic Pays), with the plan to eventually change it to Position History. Rest assured that all of the functions you're used to are still the same for the most part... so what's new with this tab then? Proceed with the article to find out. 😉
Introduction
The Position History tab's purpose is to provide a detailed history of record changes in terms of Basic Pay throughout the employees work cycle but also for the following fields:
Occupation 🛠️ The list of all available positions within the company.
Cost Centre 🏦 The internal accounts which you assign employee-generated costs to.
Department 🏢 A division of the company.
Section 👥 Departments are usually split into Sections.
Unit 👤 Sections are usually split into Units.
Grade 💰 It identifies the pay range a particular position is entitled to.
Location 🏙️ The physical site an employee works from.
This will allow you to be accurate in different scenarios, such as aligning your basic pay changes with the company chosen grade for that specific position, but also to report on:
What is the payment range for a specific occupation.
To which cost centres the basic pays are allocated.
Which departments, sections and units are affected by specific choices in terms of pay wages.
What the wages trend is for a specific location for a certain occupation type.
How that employee is doing in terms of promotions and salary increases.
And much more...
You can achieve this by extracting the Position History data in order to work on it how you please.
🙂 Good News
The Basic Pays records entered before the introduction of the Position History feature will still be displayed. These values will be shown along with their corresponding Occupation, Cost Centre, Department, Section, Unit, Grade, and Location as they were at the time the Basic Pay was created.
First of all: What is a Basic Pay?
First of all: What is a Basic Pay?
A Basic Pay is the basic wage given to an employee in return for their work. This excludes any bonuses, benefits and adjustments, and is listed as gross pay (before any tax or NI is deducted). The basic pay amount can be specified either as hourly fee for employees paid wages or as a salary. The very first time you enter a basic pay for an employee is usually at the employee creation ➕ in the 'Employees tab'.
Permissions
Permissions
The users granted the HR_Employee permission will be able to access the Position History tab.
However, if you want to restrict the access to the Basic Pay details you still want to add or remove the HR_BasicPay permission to your users. Below some scenarios:
Users with only HR_Employee can:
Access the Position History tab.
Manage and view all its fields BUT the Basic Pay one, according to the rights granted (View, Delete, Insert, Update)
Users with both HR_Employee and HR_BasicPay can:
Access the Position History tab.
Manage and view all its fields including the Basic Pay one, according to the rights granted (View, Delete, Insert, Update).
Managing Employee Details on the Employee Screen
Managing Employee Details on the Employee Screen
From the Employees tab it is possible to amend the details related to the selected employee. When modifying the Basic Pay value along with any of the above-mentioned fields, Indigo will prompt you to Set an Effective Date (the date from which the modification applies). This is compulsory.
Once you enter the date and click on the Save button, a new record line will be created in the Position History tab.
🗒️ Note
If you set a past effective date from the Employee profile, an error message is shown in the bottom right corner. This is because the Employee profile only accepts present or future effective dates.
However, you can set a past effective date for the mentioned fields if you amend or create a record straight in the Position History tab.
Managing records in the Position History tab
Managing records in the Position History tab
The Position History tab is shown as a grid. Here all the scheduled and past record changes are displayed in separate selectable lines.
1) To create a new record:
Click on the Insert ➕ button and fill up the fields accordingly:
💡 Tip
For almost all the field you can click on the 🔍 icon. Here you can go through the full list of values for that specific field and also create a new one to select by clicking on the ➕ icon.
Click on the Save button ✔️ when you are ready.
⚠️ Caution
If you create or modify one of the fields retroactively (before today's date), all the values you input might affect reports and calculations in the past.
E.g. On October 2024, you create a new basic pay record effective for August 2024. If you will re-open the August Payroll for some reason and re-calculate it, the basic wages showing in the payslips and related reports will change according to your recent retroactive basic pay update.
2) To delete a record:
Tick the record's checkbox in the grid view and click on the bin icon 🗑️
Click Delete when asked 'Are you sure you want to delete the 1 selected record?'
3) To edit an existing record:
Tick the record's checkbox and click on the pencil icon. ✏️ Now proceed with your needed modifications. 🙂
🤔 Remember
1) When a value is selected or inserted and saved for the above-mentioned fields, it will override the existing ones in the Employee tab when the Effective Date hits.
2) When editing a record whose effective date is in the past but not affecting the present date, a pop up message will show before finalising the saving.
E.g. The last Position History entry is for the 25th. Today is the 30th which means that the last record is still valid and ongoing today. If you try to edit this record, no pop up will show.
However, if there is another record before the 25th and you try to edit it, the message will pop up.
System Filters
System Filters
The System Filters can be accessed by toggling the sidebar that appears after clicking the related icon on the toolbar. The sidebar shows up on the right side of the screen.
The available filtering options for this tab are:
Basic Pay changes: it filters changes done only to the Basic Pay field.
Occupation changes: it filters changes done only to the Occupation field.
Cost Centre changes: it filters changes done only to the Cost Centre field.
Department changes: it filters changes done only to the Department field.
Section changes: it filters changes done only to the Section field.
Unit changes: it filters changes done only to the Unit field.
Grade changes: it filters changes done only to the Grade field.
Location changes: it filters changes done only to the Location field.
Active this year: it filters changes done only to the records referring to this year.
Feel free to experiment by selecting one or more of the above filters to achieve the needed narrowed results.
🗒️ Note
When an employee is created from scratch and saved, it triggers the creation of a very first record in the Position History tab. This record will always show, no matter what system filter you will pick, as it works as a 'starting value' to compare to the future changes.
Send an Email on Basic Pay Change
Send an Email on Basic Pay Change
You can set Indigo to email relevant people within your company when an employee's pay has been changed. To do that:
Go to Payroll, click on Settings, select Payroll followed by Employee Settings.
Click Edit and tick the setting 'Enable email notification on basic pay change'.
In the field directly below, enter the email addresses of the people that need to be notified of any basic pay changes. Separate each address with a semicolon.
Select Save.
When an employee's basic pay has been changed, the below email will be sent to the email addresses to be notified, with the respective employee's code and name in the email text.
Importing and Exporting records in the Position History tab
Importing and Exporting records in the Position History tab
If you are more on an a time optimisation page ⏲️, please note that it is also possible to bulk import and export the Position History records including the Basic Pays. 😉
The importing and exporting process works exactly the same as for the Employees tab and Pay Items tab:
You can generate a blank template in excel to populate the blank cells and upload new records.
You can Create a Selection Templates which will allow you to have the columns you need ready for exporting in every specific scenario you need. Once you create them, just look for the needed one in the Filter Templates field.
You can export the selected columns, update the values in the cells and import the file to update existing records.
📋 Note
If the fields are left empty in the excel file, the system will use the previous entry before the effective date to populate the respective values in the Position History grid.
E.g. You only want to change Occupation whose effective date is 30/04/2025. Then only fill up the OccupationCode column along with the EffectiveDate one. 👇
To force an empty field, input [BLANK] in the Excel field.
E.g. You need the Occupation field to be blank, then you'll input [BLANK] under the Occupation column in excel. Once the effective date hit, the field will become blank.
🧠 Important Tips
We saw that the Position-History-related fields can be inputted and updated also from the Employee profile.
But, what happens if you do so by importing an excel file?
You can update any field in the Employee Profile except the ones available in the Position History tab (including the Basic Pay), via an excel file import.
E.g. You cannot update the Occupation in the Employee Profile importing an excel file, but you can update the Work Schedule.
You can create a brand new Employee Profile importing an excel file. Only in this case, you can fill up the Position History fields mentioned in this article, in the excel file you'll import.
The initial effective date for the Position History fields will automatically be set to the employment date.